Two-way bending behavior of profiled steel sheet dry board composite panel system

Abstract This paper describes the structural behavior, analysis, and testing of a structural system known as the profiled steel sheeting dry board (PSSDB) system when applied as two-way floor panels subjected to out-of-plane loading. The system consists of profiled steel sheeting connected to dry boards by self-drilling, self-tapping screws. Analytical models employing the finite element method have been proposed to analyze the panel. This involved two types of modeling: first, the isotropic model, and secondly, the orthotropic equivalent model representing the geometrically orthotropic profiled steel sheeting. It is the simpler latter approach which is of main interest. However, comparison of theoretical to experimental results shows that the isotropic model is more accurate, within reasonable agreement with discrepancies ranging from 2.8% to 12.8%. The ‘orthotropic model’, on the other hand, shows a bigger discrepancy of more than 30%. This indicates that there is a need for improving further the orthotropic model as described in this paper. However, for practical design purposes, the orthotropic model is acceptable since it is more conservative in predicting deflection values of the two-way PSSDB panel. The orthotropic model is preferred over the isotropic model because it is less tedious, requiring less computer memory and computational time, and is more practical for design purposes.